You pray for healing and peace, and rightly so, for our merciful God hears the cries of His children. Yet while you ask for deliverance from bodily afflictions and the troubles of this life, remember that the evils which truly threaten us are not only the scourges that befall the body, famines, sicknesses, and the like, which Scripture itself sometimes calls “evil”, but the spiritual works of the enemy. The Apostle, when he had been snatched from the very jaws of Nero, cried out that the Lord would deliver him from every evil work, not merely from death. So too for you and your household: seek first to be delivered from sin, from the remembrance of wrongs, from a tongue that speaks guile, from strife and division. For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. If you would have peace, then be a peacemaker. Nothing so delights God as to forget injuries and live in gentleness with your brother. If someone wrongs you, bear it; if war threatens, pursue peace. This is the imitation of the Son of God, and it brings to you the adoption of sons, for you have put on Christ and received the Spirit of adoption.
Do not merely ask to be surrounded by peace as a wall, but build that wall yourself, stone by stone, through a careful hearing of the word, through fortitude, through contempt for worldly wealth and glory. When afflictions come, and they will, for the present life is a wrestling-school, do not imagine that God has abandoned you. He who delivered the Apostle from the lion’s mouth is able to deliver you too, yet sometimes He permits trials to train your soul, to teach you the fear of the Lord, to draw you nearer to Himself. In these moments, recall that He creates light out of nothing and can make even seeming evils work together for your good. Therefore, do not let your prayer be only for outward shelter, but for an inward transformation: that your whole household may depart from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it, and so become true sons of God, radiating that joy which no calamity can quench. For the good we truly need is the hope of the life to come, purchased by Christ who redeemed us from the curse of the Law. Hold fast to that hope, and you shall find that He is both your healer and your peace.